Star Parker, Still Writing, Still Wrong

 

          Star Parker, Still Writing, Still Wrong

05/25/2023

In today’s column, Star Parker, ever the apologist for right wing madness, excoriates the Democratic Party for the current debt ceiling crisis. She also of course, phrases it in such a manner as to imply that the Republican Party is relatively blameless for the size of the current deficit. She does this by simply ignoring the three record deficits of the Trump administration. Of course, she also ignores the fact that one of the drivers of the size of the current deficit is the Trump tax reduction which is costing more money than it generates.

I have previously written page after page on the economics involved and the fiction inherent in the Republican mantra that cutting taxes increases the economy elsewhere. This has been proven false time after time after time as tax decreases have been followed by reduced federal revenue and obviously an increase in the federal deficit.

Of course, we also hear the Republicans griping about what they call “entitlements” such as Medicare Medicaid and Social Security. If you listen to the Republicans you might almost believe that we are increasing Social Security spending simply as a budget item and therefore spending more on Social Security. Statistically, it is obvious why the Social Security share of the federal budget is increasing. More people, by which I mean the baby boomers, are living longer, resulting in the fact that far fewer people are paying into Social Security than are drawing out of it and that number is increasing as the boomers reach seniority. As unpleasant as it may sound, the fact is that the baby boomer generation will eventually move through the system and on to whatever reward they have elsewhere and a lower number of people as a percentage of population will be drawing Social Security. This is guaranteed because of the almost 50% decrease in the birth rate that followed the end of the baby boom generation.

 I have written at length elsewhere about one measure that should have been taken to avoid this crisis. The fix, which should have been applied about 1950, (when it became obvious that average life expectancy had already increased by seven years from 1936) would have been to increase the age for full Social Security retirement by one year every decade for three or four decades (“grandfathering” those in the ten-year clade before the first bump occurred) and reduce the amount of early SS paid to those who take it while increasing the year of early eligibility several years.  Had that been done, we would not have the current issue with Social Security spending that we do, because a significantly lower number of people would enter the system in any given year. However, that ship has sailed and the best we can do is wait it out. That said, considering the more than 17 year current longer lifespan from 1936, when most Americans didn’t even live long enough to be eligible, until the current year, it still might be appropriate to bump up the eligibility age by a couple of years over two decades. What worked in 1936 doesn’t work today simply because we live much longer and can work a couple of years longer also.   

While we’re speaking of average life expectancy, here are two additional significant and sobering pieces of data:            

1) Life expectancy in the U.S. fell by 2.7 years from 2019 to 2021, whereas in peer countries, life expectancies fell by an average of only 0.2 years in this period. In other words, COVID-19 erased two decades of life expectancy growth in the U.S., whereas the average life expectancy for comparable countries has decreased only marginally, to 2018 levels.

2) The US, which we are frequently told by various officials has the “Finest health care system in the world” spends more and provides less than any equivalent economy in the world. Trust me, multiple international studies verify this statement. 

One way to address this, (the “cost” side of the issue) which I have ranted about on many occasions, is to simply re-legislate Medicare Part D to allow Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate drug prices. Many major U.S. pharma companies at present are showing net annual profits in the range of 25 to 30% which is five to six times average corporate profit in the United States.

        While they complain that allowing the negotiation of drugs and their pricing by Medicare and Medicaid would reduce the money they have available for research and development, the truth is they already spend more on advertising than on research and development and about 3/4 of the drugs newly approved by the FDA on the annual basis are the result of basic research funded by the National Institutes of health. I mentioned this only because such a step would reduce Medicare drug spending by hundreds of billions of dollars annually and yet the deficit Hawks of the Right don't want to address this simply because each member of Congress receives about half a million dollars in drug industry lobbying annually.  In 2020, US health care lobbying expenditures totaled $713.6 million! Also, collectively, Pharma companies spent $6.88 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising in 2021. By the way, only New Zealand and the US even allow that sort of advertising.

Reducing Medicare drug spending is a commonsense issue and Big Pharma fights it like hell, even though they bend and spread for every commercial insurer in the US. Your Medicare Advantage Plan and every other health insurer in the US negotiates drug prices, why not Medicare?

All the above is aimed at reducing spending, but the larger issue is Federal revenue. The bigger and more frustrating issue, which Miss Parker completely ignores, is the simple fact that if you spend more you need to collect more. We are at what amounts to an all-time low in income tax rates, yet the same people who scream about taxes are the people screaming about the debt ceiling. The frustrating part is that those whose lifestyle will be least affected by increased taxes are those who scream loudest. It is equally puzzling when a moron like Marjorie Taylor Green opposes tax increases although she is so far from the category of people that would really feel any effects from it that it is simply a contradiction in terms. It is doubtful that more than three people in Marjorie Taylor Green’s Congressional District are high enough earners that they would even feel a tax increase on those that earn more than $400,000 a year which is one of the proposals in terms of where the marginal rate increase might kick in. Additionally, we collect almost a trillion dollars less annually than what is legitimately owed, yet the Congress balks at the hiring of more IRS agents as current employees retire, citing the Left’s intention of “weaponizing” of the IRS.

        In short, (yes, I know, too late) those on the right side of the aisle are prepared to go to the wall to protect the perks and privileges of those who already have far more than they need, and they're willing to do it at the expense of people who are essentially economically defenseless. We speak derisively of the Russian Oligarchs, while our Congress protects our homegrown versions. Meanwhile, underinformed talking heads like Star Parker point the accusatory finger at the current administration while ignoring the sins of previous administrations.

Economically we simply need to come to grips with the fact that trickle-down economics doesn't work and that tax reductions do not increase federal revenue, as has been proven by Reagan, Bush 43 and by Trump. How many more times must we be slapped in the face with reality before we acknowledge it?